Tag Archives: WildStorm

If you’ve checked out any of my articles for Geek Nerdery you’ve noted my fandom of WildStorm comics. There’s one fan out there, who is a bigger fan than me, that took it upon themselves to interview several former WildStorm Studio members to write a whole damn book! Said writer, Joseph Hedges, set up a Kickstarter to fund the printing of the book. Well, that goal was hit in a few days, but there’s still time to jump in and back the campaign!

I guess an alternate name for this entry could be “Five Short Stories Featuring Gen13.” As both issues are shorts that are chronicling what the Gen13 members were up to between the first volume and the second. They’re mostly small and fun stories, and they’re done by a variety of artists. I imagine one of the many reasons they were done was to give more lead time for J. Scott Campbell for the series proper and keep the “Gen13” name alive and out in front of the comic buying and reading audience.

The first story, as detailed in “Gen13” 1/2 has the kids pretty fresh out of the mini-series going on a bit of a road trip. Rainmaker has already left to be with her family in Arizona and the kids are now just driving around, supposedly they’re just killing some time before meeting up with Lynch down in San Diego, but they could just be being silly ass teens with no real direction. They have been told by Lynch to stick to the backroads to avoid altercations with local authorities or Ivana’s Keepers. They’re having some real problems with reading the map to said backroads, but that’s only the start of their troubles. When they pull over to ask directions and get some gas they also encounter Loran, a Traveler, or rather The Traveler, who shifted through time. She’s on the hunt for Langston, better known as Timespan who we’ve seen in a few issues of “StormWatch.” Loran has no time to deal with the primitives of this time, and in her little freak out bully time against some innocent bystanders, she catches the attention of Bobby, which in turn gets the rest of the kids to go after her. It’s a tough battle, but in the end, Loran gets tied up with a stop sign and left of the cops, as the kids continue their road trip to San Diego.

The next story is the first of four from issue 0, it stars Caitlin as she’s meeting up with her cousin and her family in Portland. Caitlin isn’t quite sure at this point if she really wants to go down to San Diego, and she might just stay in Portland with family. No sooner than she starts talking to her cousin (and her jerk husband) do some suited men start walking their way. Caitlin fears the worst, that they were sent by Ivana or by I/O and she does what she can to get away. This involves being hit by a train, then picking up said train and tossing it. That puts some distance between her and the rude boys, but she knows it’ll only slow them down for so long. Lucky for her a friend of Lynch’s pulls up and whisks her to the airport to catch a flight to San Diego. Did I say one of Lynch’s friends? Oh, turns out all these guys were pals of Lynch and it was all a set up to make sure Caitlin didn’t find a reason to stay in Portland and to make sure she joined the team. Oh, Lynch, it’s stuff like this that made so many Team 7 members dislike you.

In the ’90s it seemed like most big comic properties really wanted to keep the backstories of their newest characters as vague as possible. Examples: Wolverine and Cable. Oddly, WildStorm always seemed to be champing at the bit to give background info on their creations. We were getting comics like “Team 7” and soon “Team One” books filling in the gaps for us on a bevy of WSU characters. We’d seen a bit of Jacob’s previous adventures in “WildC.A.T.s” so now it’s time to shed a little bit of light on Zealot, AKA Lady Zannah in her own three issue limited series, titled, predictably, “Zealot.” Ok, Imma gonna present this story chronologically. I’m not gonna go all shifty shift, all over, back and forth in time. The narrative does this in the book, and it works to read it like that, talking about it, not so much.

The earliest bit of history we have in this book is the Kherubim ship crashing on Earth. And of course that can’t be the true start of the history, as there are many past events that are mentioned as well. First, we have Promethos AKA Prometheus on board the Kherubim in some sort of cell. Turns out he tried to arrange for a mutiny on the ship. Into the brig with you, ya jerkface. As the ship is going down he appeals to the past romance that he had with Zealot. In a moment of weakness, she frees him, only for him to take hostage of Savant to make sure that he gets an escape module to get safely to Earth. He lands with Savant still his hostage and telling Zealot “We can rule this world, you and I! Let’s do it! Never mind me holding Savant’s life in the balance as I make these proclamations of hypothetical greatness!” Zealot is having none of this, breaks his thumb, and Savant elbows him in his douche bag stomach. They walk away down the beach while he clutches his tummy in the sand and surf.

Time passes, a lot of time. Time enough for Zealot to set up her branch of the Coda, fight in the Trojan war, and then defect from the Coda. That last event causes the Coda to be after her. She almost gets taken down, but in a surprise twist, Prometheus saves her. Turns out since being left on the beach, he’s set himself up quite nicely on Mount Olympus, and even has a buncha servant girls. He once again tries to talk Zealot into staying with him and ruling the rubes. This time she nails his hand to a statue with her Kherubim Honor Blade and walks away. Prometheus vows revenge!

Revenge is taken, a fair bit later when Zealot is in Japan. She’s shaking up with her latest boyfriend, and learning, as well as sharpening her fighting skills in a dojo. The good times can’t last and she gets a message that Savant has been kidnapped by the Masked Warlord. You guessed it, the Masked Warlord is Prometheus and he wants to get Zealots attention. Face it, man, she’s just not that into you. After Savant is saved, and Prometheus kills Zealot’s boyfriend, the ladies jump off a cliff and swim away. Oh yeah, Zealot was stabbed in the shoulder with her Honor Blade and just swims away with it stuck there! Seriously Prometheus, stop trying so hard. Chicks don’t dig that, bro.

Finally, we get to a story set in Nazi Germany. Prometheus is a Nazi officer and he’s trying to live up to his name, and give the Nazi’s the technology to develop atomic weapons. It’s still all part of his grand plan to rule the world. His logic works thusly, have the Nazis do all the work, rise through the ranks on the inside, then take out that weak little man Hitler. Easy, peasy! Zealot objects to, well pretty much the entire plan. Giving atomic weapons to Nazis, taking over the world… she didn’t say, but I’m sure she was fine with taking out Hitler, though. From now on that’s head cannon, Zealot was fine with Hitler being killed. At any rate, she and Prometheus start to fight again, but this time it is different, Zealot means to end Prometheus, and she does so with her Honor Blade. She lops off a hand, then a stab to the abdomen and then she pops his head off. Having done all this, she goes true badass and nukes the whole damn military installation.

So yeah, that’s the story. She told it to Pris when she came out to check on her. Eventually, Void comes calling because Jacob needs everyone back at the compound. Zealot gifts her Honor Blade to Pris, as she never quite felt honorable about killing Prometheus, despite it needing to be done. I really enjoyed this short series. Sheds a little more light onto Zealot’s life. I would’ve loved to see how she and Cole met, or more what they were up to before they joined up with the team, but with a story this well done, I’m gonna let it slide.

It’s holiday time so let’s do a holiday book! But let’s face it, we know where Geek Nerdery came from, the only holiday here is Halloween! Ok, so what we have here is WildStorm’s attempt at their very own “Treehouse of Horror.” Remember when those started, there was a framing story of the Simpson kids telling scary stories to each other, and we have that here. The team, sitting around in the Smithsonian telling spooky stories. Some are stories from their past, a history of Tapestry that Zealot knows, or in Reno’s case, a horrible dream!

There’s not too much here. Reno keeps having a nightmare of visiting his parents’ graves, them rising as zombies, turning into Daemonites, trying to kill him and succeeding. We’ll find out more about Reno’s background later, but it’s that as a kid some Daemonites burned down his folks’ house and he carries the guilt of not being there to save them. Him telling this story to Savant gets the whole ball of wax going.

In going through the history of WildStorm, I sometimes come across books like this. One shots that I had no idea existed, and I was probably better for it! So there’s this book, “Voodoo / Zealot : Skin Trade.” This sad little book, this effing book. Ok, let’s be serious for a minute, this book is basically a bunch of pin-ups arranged as a story. But trashier than that sounds. For all the cheesecake glory that is “Gen13” when compared to this book “Gen13” ends up looking rather tame. And, if I was a better reviewer, and thought this was the place to get into it, I’d comment on how WildStorm went from putting out a book like this, where the women are all posed as sexual objects first and to serve the story second, to eventually putting out books that dealt with a more mature take on sex and sexuality in such a small span of time. Not to mention how much ahead of the curve on that kind of thing they were in regards to DC and Marvel. But this isn’t the blog for that and I’d never do that argument justice anyway!

We catch up with Zealot training Priss in the ways of the Coda. Along for the “It’s Not the Danger Room!” session is Cole and Jeremy who both admonish Zealot for being too harsh with Priss. Little Big Jake tells Zealot that she needs to lay off of Priss a bit and she needs a break. Zealot storms off and is then confronted by Providence. Providence tells Zealot she has information about her Zealot’s previously unknown child and proceeds to give some long convoluted story of how it’s been cryogenically frozen and will still be a young kid. Also, it’s in Yurgovia and she should go save it. Most of this is a lie, but Providence needs to get Zealot to Yurgovia and Zealot will meet her kid, so she embellished a lot.

So why does Providence need to get Zealot to Yurgovia? Well, ok, remember Yurgovia from the “WildC.A.T.s Special”? Remember how there was this Coda gal named Destine that was running it? Remember how she died getting shot in the back by Cole? Welp, I guess it didn’t take because she’s back and she’s pissed. She’s out to take Yurgovia back from the people that’d been running it since she’d been assumed dead, and also to grow her own little branch of the Coda as well. She has a few recruits already and she’s looking for more to train, which means kidnapping the children of Yurgovia. In the end, it seems that Providence didn’t like all this, because who would, and vowed to put and end to Destine’s schemes. Oh, and Destine has a bit of “the Orb” that created her and Void and she means to have it back. Not that Providence went about it attaining her goals in any logical manner, she handed out half truths to Zealot and double crossed Destine.

For those just joining us, I decided to map out a chronology of the history of the WildStorm Universe. A “beloved” part of the Image Comics group in the early ’90s. This week I’m covering four issues of their flagship title “WildC.A.T.s” which featured the eternal war between two alien races, the Kherubim, and the Daemonites. Not that these issues advance any of that story at all.

I’m not going to mince words when these issues came out, I was really torn. I didn’t like them that much, but I really loved the new heroes it introduced. Well, not Huntsman so much, but Savant, Mr. Majestic, and Soldier! But that was back in the day when I didn’t have that much comic reading under my belt, and scarcely knew the name Chris Claremont. Now that I’ve grown up, and read all those classic X-Men back issues and I’m more on board with this run than I was as a kid. Hell, thanks to “Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men” I can’t help but hear some of Wu’s narration in their “Angry Claremontian Narrator” voice. I’m a more nuanced comic reader now that I’ve learned some more history… some 20 odd years later, and I actually kind of enjoy it. Mind you, not as much as I did later issues of “WildC.A.T.s” but I didn’t dislike this as much as I did in my youth.

The first issue in the arc kicks off with Zealot trying to combat train Priss down by the waterfront near New York. Now, I have no idea if this kind of area even exists in New York City, but it does in the WSU, so we’re going have to accept it. Priss isn’t high on becoming a Coda warrior and Zealot seems chill not to take it that far (well, chill as a clef blade to the neck) when suddenly a ship explodes into the sky featuring a wounded man named Alabaster Wu. Mr. Wu’s being pursued by a beast known as a Raksha. Zealot makes short work of the Raksha, decapitating it in front of Priss, as she goes to investigate the ship while Wu takes the hell off. Turns out, Wu knows Jacob, and he needs his help! But getting to Marlowe is easier than it sounds, as he’s being chased by Priss. Oh yeah, that cut up Raksha, it totally infected Priss, taking over her mind and body, giving her a mad on to hunt down Wu.

Zealot is working her way through the ship, and she comes upon a small and passed out girl. She vows to protect this child from the beasts and starts kicking some Raksha booty. Eventually, the girl’s protector, the Huntsman, shows up and they declare a truce after a bit of back and forth between them. During the battle, Zealot took some damage from a Raksha, and a Raksha has blood that’ll eff you up, it’s a “turn you into a literal Raksha” eff you up kind of problem, so Huntsman wants to help get Zealot someplace where they can get her some help. I mean, a good idea would be to go meet back up with the rest of the WildC.A.T.s, right?

Well, the rest of the team is busy. See, Wu got a hold of Jacob and Jacob goes to meet Wu alone. While this is happening, Raksha possessed Priss convinces the team that Wu is trouble and that they need to go save Jacob from him. So Void teleports the team to where Wu and Jacob are and they’re suddenly under attack from the Troika (Attica, H.A.R.M., and Slag) who are joined by Void Jr. AKA Providence. It’s all a set up by the true villains of the story, Tapestry and Lord Soma. They hired the Troika, who I guess brought Providence along for the hell of it, and are quite pleased with to see a Raksha take over one of their enemies already, Priss.

Who is Tapestry? She’s some kind of witch that can undo your life’s events and rewrite them. Not sure if she’s overwriting these events in reality, or just in one’s brain. Either way, in the end, it’ll bend your personality to whatever Tapestry wants. Lord Soma? Oh, he hangs out with Tapestry. That’s about it. We’re not even sure if he’s a Kherubim or Daemonite high lord, like everyone else who has the title “Lord” in WildStorm books. Maybe Lord is just his first name, and his parents didn’t spell it “Lorde” because he’s a precious little snowflake with his gray skin, facial tattoos and on point mustache and soul patch game.

When the powers that be at Geek Nerdery asked me to write a little something for the site, they didn’t know that I’d been diligently hard at work mapping out the chronology of the WildStorm Comics Universe. As soon as I let that slip, they said “Bring it on!” in not so many words.

Bit of background: the WildStorm Universe started as part of the Image comics in 1992. It eventually splintered off into it’s own universe and was sold to DC as an imprint. WildStorm was officially closed down in 2011. The most well known series were “WildC.A.T.s,” “Gen13” and “the Authority.” I hit back issue bins, raided my own long box, found some trade paperbacks, hit Comixology (as well as some less desirable sites) to try an arrange the WildStorm books into a single 19 year narrative. Now I’m going back and re-reading these stories again to make sure I got it right. This is something I’m oddly passionate about, and if sorting through thousands of comics and coming up with a timeline doesn’t qualify as Geek Nerdery, I’m not sure what does.

We’re picking up in the middle of the WildStorm’s first big story arc, and with my favorite series (until “the Authority” came along) “Gen13” with it’s first five issue mini-series.

At long last, John Lynch becomes the hero that he was always destined to be! I mean, we still have almost the entire page run of “Gen13” Vol. 1 before we get to that! And it’s about damn time! It might be obvious, but much of how the early part of my reading chronology is arranged is watching the heroic rise of John Lynch. Look at the section named “Part 1 : WildStorm Rising” and you’ll find “Gen13” Vol. 1 right smack in the middle of it! Maybe I’m not being clear, but “Gen13” was one of my favorite books when I was younger, with “WildC.A.T.s” being a close second and I always thought a lot about John Lynch and his history.

I fanboyed hard for this book, I even bought 2 copies of each issue so I could cut out the coupon and mail away for what ended up being “Gen13” Vol. 2 issue 0. I gave my cut up versions to my Cousin Sean, just to spread that WildStorm love! I remember getting that 1/2 issue from my friend Randy because I’d missed out on that issue of “Wizard.” I should reverse that, at the time Randy wasn’t my friend, but a good acquaintance who was also into comics and ska music who I formed a solid friendship with years later. But issues 0 and 1/2 are still a bit of time away, for now, we need to get to issue 1!

This issue opens in the late ’70s with Stephen and Rachael Callahan getting taken down! In front of their children, lil Matthew and Nicole, how horrible! Even worse, Frank Colby was the trigger-man on Stephen! Well, that might be worse for us, see, we know both of these characters, I’m not sure at that time if Colby knew Callahan or not, but he did need to be convinced to pull that trigger. After that, the team from I/O brings in the kids as instructed, fulfilling Dane’s warning in “Team 7: Dead Reckoning” that “Craven wants your children.”

I start to get really in depth, and we don’t need that cluttering the page, so obviously, a lot more after the jump!